Are Your Contact Lenses Safe?

June 5, 2007 — -- For the country's estimated 35 million contact lens users, cleansing and replacing their lenses becomes a routine that is just as normal -- and seemingly safe -- as brushing their hair or flossing their teeth.

Just ask Paige Reichardt, of Valparaiso, Ind.., an ABCNews.com reader who says she wore her contacts for 48 years without any significant eye problems.

That changed in November 2005, when she contracted an aggressive parasitic infection in one of her eyes called Acanthamoeba keratitis, a disease for which 85 percent of victims are contact lens wearers.

Reichardt shared her chilling story on the ABCNews.com discussion boards.

"I was told on the first day that I was diagnosed that they would try to save my eye," she said. "So I knew from the start that it was serious."

The treatment, like the disease, was serious. While doctors fought for her eye, she says, she endured a number of unpleasant therapies. One of her medications was a diluted version of the same chemical used in swimming pool cleaners. "You can imagine how that feels," she said.

When the treatments failed, Reichardt endured four corneal transplant surgeries in five weeks as the disease spread and continued to destroy her eye, bit by bit.

"It's a diabolical disease," she said. "I felt like I was in a science fiction movie because there was no way to kill these damn things."In the end, Reichardt lost her eye to the disease.

Her case was one of 138 across the country that sparked a voluntary recall of the popular Advanced Medical Optics Complete MoisturePlus Multi-Purpose Solution for contacts last week.

The company insists there is no evidence that its product is contaminated with Acanthamoeba, which is normally found in soil and fresh water but rarely targets humans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged consumers, however, to throw away any bottles they still have.

It's not the first time that contact lens solution has come under scrutiny; last year, investigators implicated Bausch & Lomb's ReNu MoistureLoc solution in a rash of fungal eye infections that affected 164 contact wearers.